New Zealand, History

The first people to settle New Zealand were the Maori, who called the islands Aotearoa (“Land of the Long White Cloud”). The Maori were part of the extraordinary spread of Polynesian peoples across the far-flung islands of the Pacific Ocean between 1,000 and 3,000 years ago. Although scholars have long debated the time of their arrival in New Zealand, the strongest evidence to date indicates that the first major Maori settlement was established about ad 1200.